- [Scott] The very first episode
of the excellent cartoon Young Justice
opens with an attack by the villainous Mr. Freeze!
Thankfully, Robin the Boy Wonder is there
to stop the frosty foe, to which Freeze responds,
- Well, Boy Wonder.
The bat sent you to drive me off to prison.
Frankly, I'm underwhelmed.
- [Scott] Later, when all the heroes arrive
at the Hall of Justice, there's this exchange.
- First time at the Hall.
I'm a little overwhelmed.
- You're overwhelmed?
Freeze was underwhelmed.
Why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?
- [Scott] From this point,
whelmed quickly became a bit of a running gag in the show
with Robin interpreting the word
as meaning calm or level-headed.
- I know it's hard but try to stay whelmed.
- Everyone, stay whelmed.
- That guy is not whelmed, not whelmed at all.
- What is it with you and this whelmed thing?
- [Scott] And while it's a funny recurring joke,
it's not exactly accurate?
- You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
- Irregardless, the point is that Robin in this show
seems to believe that he invented this word
after posing an actually really interesting question.
Why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?
The answer is that people were whelmed once upon a time.
It was a common word that seems archaic today.
So the question remains, why is all the whelm gone?
How are you doing, you wonderful nerds?
Scott here, and the word underwhelm
doesn't seem to have appeared until around the 1950s,
believe it or not, as a flipped around play
on the word overwhelm which has its roots
much, much further back.
The mid-15th century saw the word
being used to refer to submerging something completely;
probably a boat being washed
and even flipped over by a massive wave.
Ah, that's right!
My dumb Pirates of the Caribbean joke earlier
was actually a hilarious and clever way
to link back to the word's nautical origins!
I'm very smart!
And thanks to whelm's connection to the sea,
it's no surprise that author Herman Melville
would use the word in chapter one of Moby Dick
describing quote, "the overwhelming idea
"of the great whale himself," end quote.
But elsewhere in the story,
we find instances of the words whelm,
whelmed, and whelmings.
Yeah, Melville used whelm much more than overwhelmed
which seems a bit weird today, right?
But so far, we've just been tracing vocabulary
from one Dick to another.
So to dive a little deeper into this whelming mystery,
here's another kind of dick, linguists!
I actually have a lot of respect for linguists.
In his excellent book about language Words On The Move,
author John McWhorter addresses this very question.
- [La'Ron] "In the word overwhelm, you might wonder
"why there's no whelm.
"In fact, there once was.
"You might wonder what it meant, and it meant to overwhelm."
- Wait, what?
How did that happen?
Why did we have two clearly connected words
that mean the exact same thing?
That seems redundant, doesn't it?
Well, it is, but that's kind of by design.
Weaker, milder vocabulary tends to move
in the direction of being more intense
and more precise over time.
As McWhorter explains.
- [La'Ron] "As much as we are condemned
"for being sloppy and vague in our language usage,
"humans are deeply committed to explicitness and clarity."
- So you may have noticed that I used the word irregardless
at the start of this video.
Irregardless, the point is.
That served a dual purpose.
Not only did it undoubtedly coax a few of you
into leaving pedantic comments before finishing the video,
but it's also a perfect analogy of the evolution of whelm.
Obviously, the correct word to use is simply regardless,
the ir- prefix is completely unnecessary
when the -less suffix of regardless
already conveys a negation of one's regards.
Is this interesting?
Please tell me, please leave a comment
telling me how interesting that you think this is.
However.
- [La'Ron] "The fact that the reinforced version of ir-
"has been so readily taken up
"indicates that people want that negation component
"to be as clear as possible."
- [Scott] The word irregardless is redundant, yes,
but it is so for the sake of reinforced clarity.
- [La'Ron] "Overwhelm began as redundant as irregardless;
"people were simply being forceful."
- As time marched on, whelmed just faded away
as the stronger overwhelmed became the standard
to communicate the exact same idea.
But this kind of vivid redundancy of language
pops up in otherwise ordinary interactions.
If you, like me, are still a fan of Hamilton,
you may be familiar with the phrase.
♪ Rise up when you're living on your knees, you rise up ♪
♪ Tell your brother that he's gotta rise up ♪
♪ Tell your sister that she's gotta rise ♪
- It's a seemingly ordinary statement
repeated throughout the musical,
but is that not equally superfluous?
How else can something rise if not upwards?
If something moves in the opposite direction,
we might say that it sinks down,
which is another redundant phrase.
There are countless examples of these.
Plan ahead, revert back, enter in, separate out, et cetera.
Coupling these words together is technically unnecessary,
sure, but who says we should only speak
in ways that are perfectly accurate and succinct?
The end result, that's another one for ya,
of these redundancies is that they now provide
a deeper level of power and clarity.
And a lot of these needlessly excessive words or phrases
carry a more substantial emotional punch
than simplified alternatives.
As McWhorter concludes.
- [La'Ron] "One of the things
"that has always happened to a great many words
"is that they start out showing what we mean,
"but end up being used to show how we feel."
- Oh, maybe that's why.
- [Scott] So, Robin, if you're watching, and I hope you are,
this might be the ultimate answer to your question.
We can trace back the history of whelmed all we want,
but the key is not in understanding that language changes,
but why it does.
And language has a tendency to become more personal,
powerful, and, yeah, a little superfluous over time.
Whelmed just doesn't carry that same vivid punchiness
that overwhelmed does
irregardless of its inherent redundancy.
As for all the other un-words that Robin
brings up throughout the show.
- The infiltrators has been out-filtrated.
- Of course I'm distraught!
- Well, get traught or get dead.
- Well, we hate to see you disturbed,
let's see if you're more turbed once we kick your can.
- If this like is the opposite of like,
is disaster the opposite of aster?
- Uh, just, like, Google them.
I wanna move on to other videos now.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)
I wanna give a huge shoutout to La'Ron from Readus 101
for providing his voice for this video.
I told him to portray a pretentious linguist
and he did not disappoint.
His channel is linked down below
and I highly suggest you check it out
for some great nerdy videos!
If you're new to the channel,
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that actually wasn't in the script,
I misread it, we make okay videos here,
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Once again, my name is Scott reminding you
to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics, see ya!
- Hey, disaster averted.
Feeling the aster.